


Stop

by LaVieEnRose



Series: The One Where Justin Loses His Hearing [85]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Asthma, Deaf Character, Disabled Character, Epilepsy, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pneumonia, Seizures, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-25
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-08-29 00:32:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16733622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: Something is very, VERY wrong.





	Stop

**Author's Note:**

> Starts immediately where "Pause" let off.

The very first time I had an asthma attack was when I had a cold. I was five, and I remember waking up in my bed and trying to call my mom, but I couldn't catch my breath. I thought there was something wrong with the room, because I guess I'd seen a cartoon or something where the bad guy took all the air out of a cave or something because, you know, cartoons, and that's what it felt like, like there just wasn't any air. It didn't even occur to me that it was something wrong with _me._ It was the environment. 

And maybe that's a metaphor for how I looked at this whole fucking thing that went down after the hell of pulling my anticonvulsant the fall my immune system crashed, how even when I was sitting on the side of my bed panting while Brian paced in front of me I still didn't _really_ believe, in my heart of hearts, that my body could be as sick as the doctors told me and as sick as it _felt,_ because that just sounded so fucking ridiculous and overdramatic that it couldn't actually be happening to me in my actual life, or maybe it's just further proof that oxygen deprivation makes you fucking stupid. 

I'd known something was wrong when I went to bed, but God, I just so, so fucking didn't want something to be wrong, not after the whole fucking ordeal we'd just been through. My new anticonvulsant was finally up to a dose that was actually doing something, but I was still so goddamn wrecked from the week of near constant seizures that when I felt shittier that night than I had for a few days I just decided, you know what, no, we're not doing this, and I wrapped my denial around me like another blanket and went to sleep. 

And then I woke up in the middle of the night and my lungs were on fire. Just like when I was a fucking kid and I blamed the room, that's what I'd thought at first, when I first woke up and I was really disoriented, that the apartment must be on fire, because I couldn't breathe and I was so hot. My shirt was sticking to me, and my next thought was that was why I couldn't breathe, like my shirt was too tight and it was strangling me. Listen, you're going to have to deal with a lot of my weird ideas through this, so you might as well get used to them now.

Maybe it's possible to get used to not being able to breathe, the way I'm used to any seizure that doesn't knock me completely unconscious. Maybe if it happens to you all the time you can get a hang of it, but I don't know. It seems impossible. There's just this panic that it's going to get worse, and that if you stop concentrating for even a second you're never going to breathe again, and there's always that part of your brain that says if you just tried harder you could do it, if you just really really work at this breath then it'll work, you're not doing everything you could. It's your fault.

Maybe it's just me, I don't know.

The point I'm (ironically) long-windedly getting to here is that when I can't breathe, that's the focus. Which explains why Brian and I started the night at a bit of an impasse, because he was really fixated on the fever, which I could not have given less of a shit about, because I couldn't fucking breathe and my inhaler wasn't doing shit. 

Brian was crouched in front of me, his hand across my forehead. **Take your temperature.**

I shook my head. “Neb,” I managed to choke out, because my fucking hand wasn't letting me sign, but God, it was so fucking hard to talk. 

**After.**

I shook my head.

**Justin, Jesus Christ, it's thirty seconds, take your fucking temperature.**

I glared at him. “Will you be...nice to me while...”

 **Jesus. Sure. I'll be nice to you for thirty seconds. Shut the fuck up,** he said, kind of gently, at least, and I took the thermometer from him and stuck it in my mouth. 

And you know what, fuck that _it's thirty seconds_ bullshit, because it was thirty seconds trying to keep my mouth closed when I could barely fucking breathe to begin with, and when the thermometer started blinking red I shoved it at Brian without looking at it. “Neb, please?” I managed to say, but he was just staring at the readout.

 **Is this right?** he said.

“How the...hh. How the fuck should I know?”

 **Breathe,** he signed without looking at me.

“I _can't._ ”

 **This can't be right,** he signed, small, almost to himself. **You're sitting here talking to me, how can this be right?**

“Brian.”

 **Sweetheart, _wait,_** he said on his way to the bathroom, and I kicked the bed in frustration and sank my head down to my hands. I felt like if I could just take one good breath in, then everything would be okay. Just one decent breath, just one, and I kept thinking, okay, this next one, maybe this next one will be it, maybe this time it won't be so bad, but I could feel my lungs filling up as I sat there. 

Brian came and got me a minute later, and I didn't know why I couldn't just do the neb in bed but okay, whatever, fine, but when he got me to the bathroom the shower was running, and I thought he was trying to make me breathe steam first like he did when I had bronchitis—he gets a little anxious about me using the nebulizer sometimes because it makes me jittery and he thinks it's going to give me a seizure, and there's just no goddamn reasoning with his weird ideas sometimes—and that was really frustrating because I was already hot as hell and I felt about ten billion times worse than I had when I had bronchitis, and he wasn't fucking listening. 

And it was also confusing because the room wasn't steamy, and I couldn't figure that out, but then he took off my clothes and his and brought me into the shower and the water was fucking ice cold.

I want you try stepping into a cold shower right now, with nice, fully-functioning lungs, and see how it makes your breathing feel. 

I would have been sobbing if I'd had any air for it. 

I wasn't hot anymore, not at all. Every drop of water on my skin hurt so much, and I tried to pull away but Brian put his arms around me so tightly I couldn't move. I've never shivered that hard in my life. 

“No, why?” I choked out.

 **You're okay,** he signed in the tiny space between us. **You're okay, you're okay, you are going to be _fine._**

“It hurts, I don't like it.”

**I know.**

“C-col—” I started to say, but my voice got stuck somewhere in my chest and I started coughing until I thought I was never going to stop. Brian lowered us down to the floor and I tried like hell to get away from the water because it felt like there was ice in my lungs already, rattling around and taking all the space and choking me, and the cold water was making it so much worse and he wasn't _listening,_ and I couldn't _talk_ —

I scrambled around the whole coughing fit, trying to get out of the spray, trying to grab onto the tile floor because I felt like I was about to slip off the fucking edge of the world, and I ended up on my hands and knees with my forehead on the ground, the water beating down on my back because I give up I give up I give up, and Brian's hand was underneath me rubbing circles on my chest, maybe soothing me, maybe **sorry,** maybe **please.**

It felt like a fucking year before he let me go and turned the water off. I probably would have just stayed there balled up and crying on the floor forever, but he came back with our biggest towel and wrapped it around me and carried me back to bed. I shivered and tried to pull the covers over me, but he shook his head and took them away from me. “No...” I said.

 **Shh.** He put the thermometer back in my mouth and brushed my hair away from my face. His hands were so gentle. He opened my jaw really carefully when the thermometer started beeping, and after he looked at the readout he ran his hand over his mouth. 

“What does it say?” I said.

He stayed perfectly still for a couple seconds, then he shook his head a little, then leaned down and touched his forehead to mine, eyes closed. His skin was really cold.

“Brian?”

He pulled back just an inch or two and put his hands on my face. He took a deep breath and said, “Okay,” out loud. His hands kept moving around, my forehead, my cheeks, my neck, like he was trying to cover all of me at once but he couldn't. “Okay.”

**You're scaring me.**

He shook his head. **Don't be scared. You still want a neb?**

I nodded hard, and he started making one. I felt really dizzy and spacey once his hands were off me, so I curled up and coughed for a while and let myself in and out. I was aware at some point that he was on the phone, which seemed kind of rude when I was Deaf and sick and like _right_ here, and then for some reason I was absolutely sure that he was calling the hospital to get my little isolation room ready. Like, once I thought of that, there was no doubt in my mind that that was what was happening. I was totally sure.

And the thought of being separated from him right then...I don't even care how pathetic this is. It scared me worse than not breathing. 

I need Brian when I'm sick, nowadays, just mentally. It's not even that I need him to do anything—though of course he does _everything,_ he's...he's everything—but I just need him physically there. I can't even explain the degree to which he calms me down. I don't know how people get by without someone like him, I really don't.

He was moving around the whole time he was talking, going from our room to the bedroom, laying washcloths over me, snapping pieces of the nebulizer together. He was talking kind of frantically into the phone, just judging by the look on his face, and that was weird because he doesn't really get frantic and I couldn't figure out why he would be upset at someone from the hospital. Maybe they couldn't find my records again. That happened once and he got really mad.

“Brian,” I said.

He reached out and took my hand but otherwise ignored me, so that was weird for a number of different reasons.

“Brian,” I said. “I don't want to go...” I started coughing. 

I saw him say “Hang on,” into the phone, then he said, **Sunshine, what?**

“I don't want to go to the hospital.”

You have to understand that I had literally no hope that this would work. In our life, I've asked Brian to not take me to the hospital roughly eighty billion times, and he's listened exactly zero.

But right now he watched me.

“I don't want to be alone,” I said.

We're gonna come back to that. I didn't realize it was significant at the time. 

But he watched me for a long time and then said, **It's just Daphne. I'm getting her to call in some antibiotics.**

I couldn't fucking believe it. “No hospital?”

**No hospital.**

“Thank you,” I said, and he pulled his lips into his mouth and nodded.

**

I don't remember much more from that night. I know I was awake on and off. There was a seizure. Brian sponged me off and told me some dumb long dirty joke at one point that I couldn't follow but I liked that he was telling it. I know now that Daphne was there, but at the time I figured I was dreaming, since no one had been allowed to visit me before that. 

When I really woke up it was light and I was alone. There was a nebulizer mask over my face and medicine in my mouth, but it didn't feel like it was doing much good. I breathed in slowly, experimentally, and it burned up to my throat, and when I wrapped my fingers around my lungs to help them exhale I could feel them stuttering, stopping. I really wanted to take them out of my body and wring them out like wet mops. That's how they felt, just...clogged and soaked. 

I sat up and coughed for a while and then slowly got out of bed. I made it about three steps before I realized this was _asinine,_ but at that point I was closer to the doorway than the bed so I just wobbled there while the room spun and clung to the doorframe and tried to focus my eyes. I found Brian eventually, walking around the kitchen, yet again on the phone. Yeah we get it, Brian, you're hearing, jeez. Talking seemed like waaaay too much work, so I just rested my head against the wall and waited for him to see me and wondered idly if I was going to faint before he did.

Luckily, he didn't take long. He did a double-take and signed, **What the fuck,** at me, spoke into the phone, hung up, and walked quickly over to me. **Yeah, no, I don't think so,** he said, corralling me back into bed.

“No,” I agreed, flopping down on my back and panting for a while. I flinched when he stuck a thermometer in my ear. “Whoa, when'd we get that?”

**Daphne, since you can't fucking breathe when I put anything in your mouth.**

“We could test that.”

He snorted. **I'll pass, Fantine. Hold that there,** he said, and I coughed a little and held the thermometer while he shook out some pills. **Finished,** he signed to me with one hand, and I took the thermometer out and looked at it. 

104.6. “Whoa.”

He glanced at it. **That's actually down.**

“Oh.”

 **Pretty much. Here,** he said. He handed me some pills and a bottle of water that he helped me balance. **How do you feel?** he asked me.

**Uh...sick.**

He played with my fingers for a minute, then sighed, which I tried not to watch with complete jealousy, and fished something out from under me. **You keep taking this off in your sleep,** he said, hooking an oxygen cannula around my ears. **I thought you liked oxygen.**

Oxygen? “Where did we get all this stuff?”

 **Daphne brought it. You don't remember?**

“Maybe.”

**She checked you out. Listened to your chest. Got you antibiotics.**

I smiled a little. **You remembered which ones don't kill me.**

He put his hands up in some very lackluster applause, and I smiled a little more. 

“She thinks I can fight this off?” I said.

He nodded and crawled over me and onto the bed, then rested his head on my chest, one arm draped over my stomach. It made it a little harder to breathe, but it's not like it made that much of a difference at that point. I ran my fingers through his hair for a while and felt him relax under me, and I just let him stay like that for a while while the room sort of swam. 

“You okay?” I said after a while.

He lifted his head. **Yeah, I'm okay.** He rubbed his palm over my chest. **Sounds bad in there.**

**Feels pretty bad.**

He crawled up the bed and kissed me really softly, not long enough to steal my air. **What do you need right now?** he asked, small. 

**Not much I don't think. Another neb.**

He nodded. **You need to drink some water.**

**Okay.**

**Can't believe you're not seizing right now.** He smoothed his hand over my head. **Your brain is deep-frying.**

**I'm a mystery.**

**Think you could eat?**

I shook my head.

 **Okay,** he said, which struck me as kind of weird. Usually he nags me to death about not eating enough, and I knew I'd dropped some weight since this whole thing started.

But before I could ask him about it I was all of a sudden, so, so goddamn tired, like I'd been hit my a wave. “Oh,” I said, struggling to keep my eyes open.

Brian laughed a little. **Drink your water first, here.** He held it up to my lips and I sipped slowly. **Good boy.**

“'M trying,” I said. I pulled in a slow breath. “Ouch.”

**You can't sleep flat like that, you need to prop up.**

“You do it,” I said, and he probably did, but fuck if I was awake for it. I was out like that. 

When I next woke up is when it started to get really bad. Brian was there, sitting me up and adjusting the flow of the oxygen before I was even fully awake. My chest hurt so fucking badly and my arm was seizing, and I tried to talk but my throat felt like it was too small and my heart was pounding so hard I could feel it in my head, and my sinuses were swollen and painful and I couldn't swallow, and oh God holy shit it was so hard to breathe. I tried to talk, I don't even know to say what, and I started coughing instead, and I couldn't get air in between them and oh God, it was so fucking scary. I was just sputtering and suffocating and hitting my chest with my fist to try to knock some of this shit loose before it choked me to death, and Brian kept his arm around my shoulders and held the nebulizer mask over my face and somehow got the trash can into my lap before I coughed so much I threw up.

I spit and shivered and tried to swallow the water Brian gave me, and I sniffled and wiped my nose on my sleeve while Brian took my temperature. I tried to ask him what it was, but my arm was still shaking and when I tried to talk I just started coughing again, oh God, make it stop, make it stop.

I breathed the medicine for a while and when Brian asked if I wanted to try the water again I nodded, and this time I swallowed a little. I gasped and tried to breathe through the fire licking its way up my chest and said, “Am I talking?”

He brushed my hair back. **You're talking.**

“Brian, something's wrong.”

**I know.**

“I think I'm sick.”

He kissed my cheek. His nose was so cold against my temple.

I can't even imagine how awful I must have sounded, drowning all over the fucking bed. Sometimes I'm really glad I can't hear.

The fever felt like it was cooking me from the inside out, but my real problem was that right at that moment, I just wanted to stop breathing. It was too fucking hard and it hurt too much and I just didn't want to do it anymore. I'm not saying I wanted to die. I just didn't want to have to breathe.

So that wasn't good.

“Brian,” I said. “I think...hh. I think we need to go.”

He shook his head, palming the back of my neck and watching me like I was the saddest fucking thing he'd ever seen. I've never seen his eyes that big.

I coughed for a while. “Hospital,” I said. “I need to go.”

He took a breath that seemed impossibly deep and said, **No.**

All right, so...that wasn't expected.

“What?”

**You saw what your neurologist said. It's not safe.**

“They'll put me...isolation, they said, they could.”

**Even that isn't a guarantee. You can't do an allergic reaction right now, you'll fucking crumble up into dust right now if someone so much as thinks about sneezing near you, and the way you're breathing they'd probably stick a tube down your throat and that fucking always gives you pneumonia.**

“I already have pneumonia,” I said, which in retrospect was a pretty reasonable objection, but he rolled his eyes like it was stupid.

He got out of bed—no, come back—and started counting out pills. **No hospital,** he said. **We can do this here.**

It must not have been as bad as it felt. I told you I get panicky when I can't breathe. I have some sort of nothing asthma attack and I get all convinced I'm going to die, and Brian is the one whose job it is to be rational, to let me know when it's really a problem.

And he was telling me we could do this here.

So it must not have been that bad.

“I'm scared,” I said.

 **But I told you not to be.** He gave me some pills. It took me a few tries to swallow them, but I did.

“I need you to hold me,” I said. 

He nodded. **Yeah, I know. Come here.**

**

So like I said, it got really bad.

My memories from that time are all jumbled up and either super vague or hideously vivid. I sort of remember sitting up in bed with Brian behind me propping me up, and he was holding one of my Frida Kahlo books on my lap while I turned the pages. I remember watching him yell at someone on the phone and thinking something must be wrong at Kinnetik and wondering why he wasn't at work. I think at one point he took me out to the balcony because I remember being really worried a bird was going to touch me, I don't know. He definitely packed me in ice once, bags under my arms and on my neck and between my legs, because I'll never forget how fucking awful that felt.

There's a lot of coughing. So much goddamn coughing. Brian's eyes were always red and I think I asked him about pollen at one point even though it was November and he doesn't have allergies. He let me take a hot shower at one point and sat on the floor with me and it felt so nice. 

I was curled up on the bathroom floor with my arms around my head at some time, I think it was night, God knows how many days into this, and my lungs reminded me of when Brian's car broke down a few years ago and the engine kept turning over but it wouldn't start. “Please can we go to the hospital?” I said.

He was sitting on the floor across from me, leaning against the shower enclosure with a whiskey glass in his hand, which didn't make a lot of sense but then again neither did anything else. Like the fact that I was asking to go to the hospital, and that when I did he just rolled his eyes and said, **Justin, stop.**

“It's really...hard to breathe.”

He looked away from me and drained his glass.

“I don't think...” I said, and I had so much I wanted to say, but God, it was so hard to talk, and I was so tired. 

And I guess he was sick of listening to me anyway, because he slammed the glass down on the floor.

 **You will be alone,** he said. **Do you understand that? They will grab you and they will put you in a box and they will _take you away from me_ and nobody will touch you. Do you understand?**

“But—”

**You told me you didn't want to be alone. You told me that. And now, of all fucking times, you're trying to be the one who what, doesn't make the decisions around here?**

**But—**

**Come on. We're going back to bed,** he said, and he lay beside me on the bed and held me so tightly it hurt.

**

Speaking of hurting. 

Brian was shaking me, hard, and there was so much pressure in my head that it felt like it was going to explode, and he wouldn't stop _moving_ me which was pretty mean because I was pretty sure I'd just had a seizure and could be fucking wait a minute? I reached out and slapped him away from me, and finally he stopped shaking me and wrapped his palm around my neck, and I was like, sure he was going to strangle me. I don't know. Seizures are fucking weird. So I kept pushing him away and finally opened my eyes, and his face was close to mine and I was convinced he was taking up all the air, because clearly _someone_ was, because I was so dizzy that I couldn't really believe I was lying still, and I could see the tips of my fingers and I was pretty sure they weren't supposed to be purple like this.

Brian cupped my cheek and I pushed him away. **Leave me alone,** I said.

Brian looked kind of sweaty and sexy and out of breath, like after he's been running on the treadmill, and I wondered if he'd been at the gym when I had the seizure like that time with Evan. How'd he get back here so fast? Did we have a treadmill? 

**You weren't breathing,** he said. 

I couldn't figure out why that was such a big fucking deal, because I never breathe during seizures. “Okay, well...” I gasped for a while. “I'm breathing now, right?”

**Yeah. Yeah, you are.**

This was so fucking obvious, how was he not getting it? “Okay...so now leave me alone.”

He bit his lip, and then he started laughing, which was okay, but then he didn't _stop_ laughing and he looked kind of crazy, and he buried his face in my hair which definitely counted as touching me and I tried to push him away, but he signed **I love you** into my hand when I tried to tackle him off of me, and I was so so so tired anyway.

**

“Brian?” I said.

He looked at the thermometer. His hands were shaking and his eyes looked puffy. **Yeah, Sunshine.**

“I think I...” I stopped and shook my head. There was no way I was getting through a full sentence with this amount of air. **I think I'll be okay by myself.**

He set the thermometer down, really slowly, really controlled.

 **You'll be okay?** he said, and there was fire in his eyes. **You'll be okay, oh, isn't that great. Isn't that just fucking precious.** He took a few steps away from the bed and turned back to me. **You'll be okay, Satine, that's lovely, what the fuck about me?**

“Brian.”

He shook his head.

I gave him a minute, then cleared my throat and said, “Satine?”

**You never saw Moulin Rouge?**

I shook my head.

 **God.** He raked his hand through his hair. **It's awful.**

**

I woke up once feeling nauseous and sore and awful and he wasn't there. I thought for a second maybe that meant I was better, but as soon as I tried to sit up I realized that was definitely not the case. I slumped back on the pillows and panted and stared at the ceiling and imagined having the kind of energy to call him. What would I even tell him? I didn't know what I needed. I didn't know how to help me.

A minute later, though, there was a glass of water and a straw in front of me, and I looked up and there was Daphne. She had on gloves and one of those surgical masks, but I knew she was smiling. I know her eyes.

“Are you real?” I asked her.

 **I'm real,** she said. It was weird, her signing with all that stuff on her. Like watching someone underwater. **Drink.**

I took a few sips of the water. **Where's Brian?** I said, while she put the thermometer in my ear.

**He went out for a little while.**

I relaxed. “Good. That's good.” He'd been stuck in here so long. 

She checked the thermometer. **Hey, you're under 105. Let's get that mask on you, here...**

“Can I give a toast?” I said. “At your wedding?”

She was taking my pulse. **Yeah, you want to start writing it now?**

“Yeah. Is Brian okay?”

**Brian's fine.**

“Molly?”

**She's with Emily, she's good.**

“Evan?”

**Also with Emily.**

**Everybody's okay,** I said.

She dabbed at my chest and neck with a washcloth. **Everyone's okay.**

**

I woke up the next time to a firm kiss on my cheek, and at first I was happy because it meant Brian was home, but then I breathed in and the faint smell of cigarette smoke hit me, and it made my throat itch and then clench and then I was coughing so, so hard. 

Brian sat me up and put his arm around me and I coughed and coughed and threw up and coughed and tried to breathe in but every time my throat would start burning and I'd start again, and fuck, this entire time I hadn't coughed like that, and I could tell it was freaking out Brian, and every breath I managed to suck in was like breathing through a fucking coffee stirrer and holy fuck it hurt so bad. I tried to push him away, get the smoke _away,_ but he thought I was just panicking and he clung harder and oh God.

“Go...”

**Justin, stop.**

“No—”

**I'm sorry, okay? I shouldn't have left. You have to stop.**

Fuck, fuck, he thought I was being a little bitch because he'd left for a few hours? He wasn't getting it, he wasn't going to let me go, I was going to fucking suffocate on a bit of secondhand smoke and motherfuck _how did I get here,_ I was fine, I was _strong._

 **Smoke,** I managed to sign eventually.

**Sunshine, there's no smoke. You're sick.**

Damn it. Damn it! **Clothes.**

And for an awful second I thought he still wasn't getting it, and then I saw him say _”Fuck,”_ out loud, and he got up and stripped out of his clothes and threw them out into the living room, then went into the bathroom. He came back a minute later, soaking wet, and picked me up and wrapped me in a towel and set me on the bathroom floor before he went back to finish his shower. I crawled over to the toilet and threw up for a while. I lay down on the floor and tried to cool off and eventually felt a hand in my hair. I slowly rolled over until I was on my side, facing him. He was sitting on the floor with a towel around his waist, his legs drawn up to his chest.

 **Justin,** he said, and then stopped and ran his hand over his mouth.

“Shhh.” I reached out and patted his leg. “It's all right now.”

**

I couldn't stop shaking at one point, just from pain. My head and my chest and my skin and every fucking nerve in my body, and I flailed on the bed and shook and shook and probably screamed, I don't know if I could make any noise at that point.

 **If I was dying, would you tell me?** I asked him.

**No.**

**Okay.**

**

At one point during one night I had to get out of bed. I _had_ to. 

It's hard to explain. It was kind of like...okay, one time back at PIFA I gave blood, and afterwards I was standing up talking to my friend who had come in, and I started feeling kind of dizzy and shitty, but I was trying to just get through this conversation without showing it because I was embarrassed or something, I don't know, and she wasn't a good friend and it wasn't that bad or anything. But then all of a sudden, it was like there was this voice in my head said _sit down right now,_ and I did it without even thinking about it, right there on the ground, and a second later everything got all spotty. The voice didn't give me any reason or anything; it wasn't _sit down before you faint,_ it was just _sit down._ And I had to listen. 

That's what this was like. Something said _you have to go, right now._

I pulled the cannula out of my nose and got out out of bed and made it about a step before my jello legs just collapsed right out from under me, but that was fine. I could crawl if I needed to. I kept going towards the door.

The light switched on and Brian was in front of me, wild-eyed and bed-headed. **Justin, what are you doing? Are you awake?**

“I'm awake.” I tried to crawl past him, but one of my legs started seizing and I stopped and pounded my fist on the floor, once, and then looked up at him. “I need...” I said, and then ran out of air. 

He nodded, watching me.

**I need you to pick me up.**

**Yeah, okay. Where are we going, bathroom?**

I shook my head. 

**Okay, back in bed then, come on.** He put his hand on my forehead. **Christ.**

“No, I have to go.”

**What are you talking about?**

I panted for a while, Brian's hands on my shoulders. “The baby.”

**The baby? She's not here.**

**I know that. I have to go to her.**

**Justin, she's...in Queens, you have pneumonia, it's 4 in the morning. You can Facetime with her in the morning, okay?**

I shook her head. **It has to be now, I have to see her right now.**

The voice in my head wasn't telling me why. 

Brian cupped my chin in his hand.

 **I have to see my daughter,** I said. 

Brian said something that looked like “Oh God,” and put his lips against my forehead. 

I was so fucking tired, and I felt myself being pulled back out, and I said, “No, no,” but Brian picked me up and put me back in the bed. “No,” I said, but I was too tired to fight, and Brian hugged me close to him. “No, Jane,” I said, and I whispered her name a few more times before I fell asleep.

**

And then I woke up and it was light. The sun coming through my window hurt my eyes, and my chest still ached when I breathed, but everything felt...clearer. 

Brian was asleep with his head on my chest. I didn't want to wake him, but I really had to use the bathroom, and judging by my attempt last night I really shouldn't be wandering around on my own. 

I ran my hand through his hair and leaned down and kissed the top of his head. 

He startled and sat up.

“Hey, it's okay,” I said. 

**Fuck. I didn't mean to fall asleep. You okay?**

I coughed and nodded. “Have to pee.”

He sat up, stretching one arm across his body, and checked the time on his watch. **About time for meds, too.**

**Okay.**

He got up and came around to my side of the bed, and I scooched myself over and put my feet on the floor. Brian gave me this kind of curious look while he shook the pills out, then put his hand on my forehead, frowned, moved it to my cheek.

 **What?** I said.

He handed me the pills and some water and stuck the thermometer in my ear while I took them.

“I like this ear thermometer thing,” I said. “Good development.”

 **Stop talking,** he said, and I laughed a little. He pulled the thermometer out and checked the display. He stared at it like it was, I don't know, some other language, or something.

 **Let me see,** I said, and he turned it around to me. 102 exactly. **That's good, right?**

He just said, **Come on, let's get you to the bathroom.**

I pulled myself up with his arm and swayed my way to the bathroom, but I felt a lot steadier than I had last night. **I can do it,** I said when we got to the toilet, and he hung out by the sinks and watched me with his thumbnail in his mouth.

I washed my hands and coughed for a while and chanced a look at my reflection. Jesus. I hadn't shaved in God knows how long, and there were bags under my eyes the size of continents. And how much fucking weight had I lost? 

Speaking of. “I think I'm hungry?”

Brian blinked at me. **What?**

**I'm hungry.**

He kept staring at me for a second, then he grabbed me and pulled me into the tightest hug I've ever had.

“Brian, you're squashing me!”

**

I didn't end up eating that time, actually, because as soon as Brian got me to the couch I fell immediately the fuck back asleep, but I woke up a few hours later and ate some toast between pulls on the nebulizer. The next time I woke up, I watched a little bit of a movie with my head on Brian's lap. I managed to text a few people the next time, and that night I Facetimed with the baby.

It was the slowest goddamn fucking recovery in the world, and you're going to hear a lot more about it, because...God, it seemed like I wouldn't be better for years. The fever would spike sometimes at night, though never as high as it had been when I was really sick, and it took ages for my breathing to get back to normal and for me to have enough energy to stay awake for more than half an hour at a stretch. It so fucking slow, and it seemed like every day was either a setback or the tiniest most babiest step forwards you can even imagine.

But I got better.

**

Brian had to you know, work, so he started going back, at first just for a few hours, then half days, then full days. I had a home nurse stay with me if he was going to be gone for more than an hour or two, and that sucked because it was embarrassing and she didn't sign and I hate being stared at, but there wasn't really any way around it. I still couldn't reliably get around the apartment by myself, and I was on way too many medications for me to keep straight, and because my breathing was still really compromised I needed someone there in case I had a seizure. The nurse always wore a mask and gloves, which I knew was for my protection, not hers, but still made me feel like a biohazard. And I still wasn't allowed to have any other visitors, so I hadn't seen Evan or my friends or my family in forever. It was so weird every time I thought about them, because it felt like, I don't know, like the whole world must have been paused while I was going through this. I guess that's shitty and selfish of me, but it was just so goddamn weird that the whole time I'd been here locked up and sick out of my mind, people were working and shopping and eating and talking and laughing and getting older. I still felt like I was in this weird state of suspended animation. Not quite sick and not quite well. 

Brian had recovered from everything pretty well, as best as I could tell. He was a little short with me, which I expected, but he didn't do anything wild or reckless or disappear for days at a time or anything like that. He slept with his ear against my chest every night and asked the nurse for a full report on how I did every evening, and we took showers and watched movies and he'd suck me off and let me watch while he jerked off, which was about all I was capable of doing. Still pretty hot, to be honest. He started complaining about me keeping him up at night coughing, so that was how I knew everything would be okay.

I was sacked the fuck out on the couch one night while he made dinner, and I waved for his attention and said, **What the fuck are you doing to that broccoli?**

He looked at the bowl, then at me. **Uh, boiling it?**

**Don't boil it!**

**You have no immune system, Mimi. I'm boiling anything you put in your mouth.**

**Rent, Brian? Seriously?**

He looked at me like he didn't even know who I was. **La Boheme.**

**You can't boil broccoli.**

**Oh, just watch me,** he said, and he tossed it into a pot.

**Boiled vegetables lose between twenty-two and thirty-four percent of their vitamin C! Next time I get sick it's going to be your fault for depriving me of valuable nutrients! How are you not dead yet? You're eating some of that broccoli, you know. Even if it is a third less nutritious than it could be.**

Brian shook his head, a ghost of a smile on his face.

 **And what's so funny?** I said.

He grinned for real and looked away, and then fingerspelled, **He's baaaaack.**

**

So I guess that would be the end of our little story, except one day, about a week after Brian went back to work full-time, Daphne had a day off and she came to stay with me instead of the nurse. God, it was so much better. I almost forgot I was sick, for some of it. We watched movies and she made popcorn and she made it feel like we were just hanging out regularly. She filled me in on how everyone was doing and said they couldn't wait to see me.

But of course I had to take like twenty naps over the course of the day, and they always hit me so fucking suddenly. I lay back on the couch and groaned. **I can't believe I'm this fucking tired still.**

**Well, you did almost die.**

I rolled my eyes. **You sound like me. I was such a fucking drama queen. I swear I thought I was dying at one point. I don't know how Brian puts up with me.**

She raised an eyebrow. 

**What?** I said.

She sighed and leaned on her elbow. **You weren't being a drama queen. You don't know this? You were really, really sick.**

**Yeah, I know, but...**

**I don't think you do,** she said. **When he called me, that first night when you get sick? He said, Daphne, I think he's dying on me.**

“No, but...”

She just nodded.

And I thought about some things he'd said.

_If I was dying, would you tell me?_

_No._

And I thought about the names he'd called me when I was sick. Satine, who I'd looked up eventually. Fantine. Mimi. 

They all had something in common.

 **No,** I said. **I asked him to take me the hospital, he said I didn't...**

_We can do this here._

**The hospital would have been risky as shit,** she said. **I didn't want you there either. He probably was just weighing how dangerous it was.**

_They will grab you and they will put you in a box and they will take you away from me._

**Yeah,** I said, even though I knew it wasn't that. **Yeah. Maybe.**

**

I woke up later on my bed, even though I didn't remember getting there. It was dark outside, and I could smell the steam from the shower. I sat up, gave myself a minute to get my bearings, and went into the bathroom, holding onto the wall for support.

Brian looked up when I opened the shower door. **Hey, I was gonna get you after this. How was Daphne?**

 **You didn't want me to die alone,** I said. 

I stared at him, waiting for him to deny it. Yell at me. Cry. Anything.

He was still for a while, suds in his hair, and then he said, **Would you prefer that I wanted you to die alone?**

“Jesus Christ, Brian.”

There was an edge of irritation in him. **What does it matter now? You didn't die.**

“I just...” And God, what could I even say? The things that I ask him to do for me, the feelings that I ask him to have, the fucking duty that he owes to me and this relationship...how do you wake up next to somebody you love everyday and ask him to do that? How do you kiss him and send him off to work and expect him to be able to bear this? “Fuck, Brian, are you okay? I am so sorry, I can't—”

 **Stop,** he said, in my face, dead fucking serious. **You stop that right now. You understand me?**

“Yeah.”

**No, you...you understand me, okay, but I want to see you say it, you got it? This happened to _you._ You were almost killed by your fucking medication that's supposed to save your life. You had seizures for a week. You dislocated your shoulder. You got pneumonia. You couldn't see your friends or your baby. You almost died.**

I watched him.

 **Say it,** he said.

**It happened to me.**

**What did?**

**I got sick. I almost died.**

He was bent down at my eye level, his gaze fixed on me. **Yes. Now. Are _you_ okay?**

I thought I was going to say yes, I really did. I was all fucking ready. And then, somehow...it was that voice in my head again. The one you can't ignore. _Shake your head and start bawling your fucking eyes out._

So I did, and Brian said, **That's right, that's _right,_** and his arms came around me and held me so tight.

“I'm not okay. I'm not okay.”

He nodded and kissed my cheek.

I took as deep a breath as I could. “I will be,” I said into his chest, like a promise, a benediction. “I will be.”


End file.
